


Seven Deadly Sins

by insanity_by_proxy



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gluttony, Love/Hate, Lust, Mad Swan, Pride, Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Deadly Sins Week, Some Plot, envy - Freeform, greed - Freeform, parent trap, sloth - Freeform, wrath - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:19:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insanity_by_proxy/pseuds/insanity_by_proxy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character studies of Jefferson and Emma, in particular their vices, and how these vices ultimately brings them together.</p><p>Series of shorts written for the Seven Deadly Sins Week hosted by Mad Swan Feels on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wrath

Wrath

His madness sometimes manifests in uncontrollable rages; when the howling in his head putrefies in his heart and works through his lungs, eventually to be expelled in words only half formed when they are uttered. He howls for justice, for Grace, and for all the things he has been denied since he was trapped in Wonderland. He had thought that there could be no worse hell than the Queen of Hearts’ domain. He was wrong. 

Storybrooke is worse… much much worse. 

Everything he longs for is out on display and yet further out of his reach than ever before. In Storybrooke no one remembers who they are, and they call Jefferson ugly names for telling the truth. 

“Insane” They say. 

“Eccentric” Is the kinder version, but said with no less of a warning. 

“Hospitalization.” Is the general opinion on what to do with him.

“Treatment.” And “Lock him up!” are also frequently mentioned.

“Mad.” Is the one thing that everyone agrees on… but for all the wrong reasons. 

It’s the frustration that gets to him when it’s not the grief. Either way, they both get mixed into the emotional Molotov that he will one day use to burn the Queen’s pretty little castle to ashes. They say that hell hath no fury as a woman scorned… but whoever says that hasn’t tasted a mad hatter’s wrath. 

The destruction he causes in such episodes stupefies even himself when he finally snaps out of them. The morning after the first time he met Emma Swan was no different. He feels that he should go and apologize to her at some point, but he doesn’t think that she’d be terribly receptive to seeing him again. 

He settles for leaving an anonymous bouquet of flowers and a box of her favorite cookies from Granny’s sitting on her front stoop for her to find the next time she steps out her door. He realizes that it might come off as a little crazy, but he hopes that she’ll forgive him… for everything.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Emma drinks to forget. 

She’s spent long nights in many a police station holding cell when the drink doesn’t provide the amnesia as it’s supposed to. Or at least the distraction. 

Emma has plenty to be angry about; absent parents, abusive foster families, back-stabbing lovers, etc. She drinks to forget, because if she didn’t she’d spend every waking hour taking it out on the world and ultimately, on herself. That’s why she became a bounty hunter, she could beat the crap out of a guy and no one would blame her, the money isn’t too bad either. Ultimately she does it for the pleasure, for the catharsis of bringing a sonofabitch to justice. 

She doesn’t tell anyone, but she especially enjoys bringing in the parents who skip out on their child support bills, and the guys who cheat a woman out of her money… Not that there’s anyone to tell, but that’s a part of being a creature of pain and wrath; no one sticks around for too long, not that she does either. 

If she’s honest, all the whiskey and all the fugitives in the world would do little to quench the fire in her guts that was kindled by the various betrayals in her life. She realizes she should probably be in therapy or something… an abandoned kid’s version of AA, but as far as she knows that doesn’t actually exist, and even if it did she doesn’t stay in one place long enough for it to make a difference. 

It isn’t until she’s drinking to forget a man who called himself the Mad Hatter that she really mulls over his words. Whether Mary Margaret is her biological mother or not, is irrelevant. Mary Margaret has become the closest thing to family she’s ever had… And then there’s Henry; sweet, brave, slightly delusional little Henry whom she couldn’t be more fascinated by. And some of the anger starts to slip away. Her parents abandoned her and her boyfriend screwed her over… but that was the past, it couldn’t be changed, but Emma did have control over her future and whether or not she wanted the family that Storybrooke was offering. Whether or not she accepted it was entirely up to Emma. 

So she downs the remains of her drink, leaves a few crumpled bills on the counter and goes to see about not dousing the fire in her heart per say, but instead using a different sort of fuel to feed it. And she admits to no one in particular, for no one is around to hear her, that it would be a welcome change. She does wonder about the flowers and the cinnamon cookies sitting on her doorstep when she returns home, but they are beautiful and delicious respectively, so that is as far as her thoughts on the subject wander.


	2. Greed

Greed

As a younger man Jefferson had been a creature whose existence was entirely defined by wealth, fashion, luxury and their acquisition. No amount of money was ever enough to satisfy his desires, and whenever his latest toy was acquired his attention would be snared by the next shiny bauble to pass him by. Jefferson’s association with Rumpelstiltskin had fed this flame by constantly keeping him in full and fashionable pockets. But it was never enough, he would do almost anything for more. Growing up an orphan, left to one’s own devices and never knowing where or when the next meal came from can do that to a person.

Then along came Grace. 

Grace changed everything, she was a beautiful accident that forced Jefferson to accept responsibility for his actions and to grow up quickly in order to provide for his new family. He became the father he wished he had had during his own childhood, but still the greed remained in his heart. 

The shock of losing his wife, Grace’s mother, made it so that a small house in the forest and a simple life of selling mushrooms was almost ideal. Grace grew up without the fear of losing her remaining parent, and Jefferson could devote all that was left of himself to his daughter. However, when he was unable to fulfill his sweet daughter’s wishes whether it was to buy her chocolate, or a new stuffed rabbit, or worse, to fill her rumbling belly during many lean winters the shame he felt at not being able to properly provide for her ate at his heart. With no other skills aside from thievery, confidence schemes and the occasional poor scrap of tailoring, Jefferson had little to sell to earn his bread and it made him sometimes long for the life he had left behind; if only to be able to give beautiful things to his daughter. 

It was the promise of this glinting gold that led Jefferson astray and trapped him in Wonderland. The promise of Grace being provided for, for the rest of her days, was too strong to ignore. The tantalizing apple dangled, a taste of his old life returned, was too good to pass up.

Unsurprisingly, the apple was poisoned.

In Storybrooke, Regina had provided him with all the riches he could have ever wanted, all the fine clothes and expensive things. Grace too had everything she could have ever desired waiting for her in a room on the house’s second floor. But in Storybrooke there was no Grace. In this world she was called Paige. In this world Jefferson was a stranger, and her father was another.

As Jefferson sat alone in his mansion he concluded that greed was his worst sin, because even though it gave him everything he ever wanted, it had stolen everything he’d ever loved.

Now his greed was focused on something besides his daughter.

Magic was what he needed now. Magic would break the curse, magic would wake everyone up and return his daughter to him. 

Magic could only be found within Emma. 

He’d tasted her magic the night he’d kidnapped her and it had been intoxicating, like falling off the wagon after a long period of sobriety. Magic… he truly had missed its tingle. 

Jefferson started to find excuses just to be around her. “Accidentally” running into her in the supermarket, or in Granny’s in the morning as she bought her first cup of coffee. She’d arrested him the first dozen times or so, but as he’d pointed out she couldn’t detain him legally without pressing charges, and then that would open up the whole can of worms of why she had been out in the forest in the middle of the night in the first place. So eventually Emma grew used to his pestering, and accepted him as an annoying facet of her life akin to pimples, and mosquito bites. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Emma made a living out of punishing greedy people. 

Emma herself, had never been particularly greedy. During her thieving years, she took what she needed to survive and only ever stole from those she decided could afford it; big chain stores and the like. She did feel guilty about taking from the individual workers who would undoubtedly pay for her actions… but a girl has to eat. 

After her stint in jail, Emma had sworn off thieving and gotten a proper job... or at least a paying one; bounty hunter and private detective. Emma excelled at finding people, though she never did find her parents, and then there were some people she just didn’t want to find no matter how sweet the revenge could be. 

It wasn’t until Henry came into her life that greed entered into her emotional vocabulary. After a while, after the initial worry for the kid’s sanity had worn off, Emma found she began to crave time spent with Henry. Operation Cobra, though still kinda crazy, became fun because it was time spend with him. It was about that time that Regina’s possessiveness became that much more irritating. 

(Emma had thought she understood the meaning of the word irritating before she met Jefferson, but then he started stalking her.)

Jefferson’s presence in Emma’s life had become a source of almost perverse continuity in an environment that constantly shifted and challenged her. If there was one thing she could count on during her day it was Jefferson’s intrusion into her routine. She’d come to expect him showing up sometime around the start of her day, usually while she got coffee at Granny’s. Then again at lunch he’d wait for her outside the station and accompany her for food. Then once more as she made her final rounds of the day, usually slipping into the sheriff’s car while she investigated a disturbance. 

Over time he had begun to provide her with a sounding board for her annoyances with Regina and with life in general. Emma complained to Jefferson of Regina’s latest efforts to bar her access to Henry or the like, and Jefferson would reply with a story of his own, usually detailing his escapades in the Fairy Tale Land. Granted, Emma didn’t believe a word of such stories, but the experience of sharing is what began to bring them together. Soon they found that they liked a lot of the same crappy day-time TV, as well as sharing an affinity for French cuisine, greasy Chinese take-out, and black-and-white movies. Emma began to frequent Storybrooke’s lone night club, the Rabbit Hole, which Jefferson owned, and Jefferson began to be seen out in public. 

Meanwhile, people around town were noticing that their stern sheriff Emma was smiling more often and more sincerely, and most of them suspected her new friendship with the town’s reclusive millionaire was the cause.


	3. Sloth

Sloth

In Wonderland, killing Time was a crime punishable by death. So sloth was the most dire of cardinal sins. 

In Storybrooke, Time himself was guilty of sloth. Time crawled in Storybrooke, if it ever moved at all. As one of the only two residents of that fair town to have an awareness of time’s passing, it was maddening to see the sun rise and set day upon day, upon week, upon month, upon year and for nothing to ever change. So when Emma arrived and time was suddenly shaken out of his lazy slump and spurred into a brisk jog once more, Jefferson sat up and took notice.

Emma was a naturally lazy person. Saturday mornings of her life were usually spent in bed munching on a sugary breakfast cereal watching inane cartoons on television. This had continued for far more years than was socially acceptable. Work was work, and when Emma didn’t have to work she usually lay about if she could get away with it. As a kid, the Pleasure Island aspect of the Pinocchio story had been vastly appealing… minus the bit where all the kids turned into donkeys.

It was this vice of Emma’s that annoyed Jefferson the most. Her stubborn laziness fed into her inability to see the truth. Emma was so complacent with the monotony and boringness of her world that the wonder and magic just waiting for her to wake up to it would wait forever in vain due to her sloth. 

Despite their growing friendship this was the source of most of their tension, and the root of most of their arguments. They would always end the same way; with Emma glaring at him, her lips pursed in a thin angry line, and Jefferson’s demons screaming in his head as his hands tear at his hair and his eyes blaze with fiery wrath. 

She is a reluctant goddess of rebirth and change, though she doesn’t know it. While he is an agent of wrath and destruction… The unstoppable force meets the immovable object, and for both the experience is frustrating in the extreme.

So when Jefferson is presented the opportunity for change… even if that change was being offered by a serpent like Regina, it was irresistible for a desperate man like Jefferson.

Unfortunately, it was Henry who paid the price.


	4. Pride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve decided to omit Neal from the picture here, as he provides an element that’s way too complicated for me to cover in these shorts. In summary: no Neal, because I’m busy (lazy).
> 
> Decided to edit this and the next chapter, because upon re-reading I wasn't entirely happy.

Pride

Pride had always been one of Jefferson’s worst sins. 

As a young man cheating people out of their money or valuable objects had made him think that he was smarter than everyone else. In particular, he used to boast about tricking an emperor into believing that he could weave fabric out of thread so fine that it was only visible to people worthy enough to see it. Later on Jefferson had elaborated the hoax so that that the fabric was also invisible to those who were unfit for their position or incompetent. By then the emperor had commissioned Jefferson to make him a new wardrobe out of this fine material; agreeing to a price that bordered on the obscene. When the fateful day finally arrived and the Emperor revealed his fabulous new wardrobe to the royal court, not a single courtier made a peep about the emperor’s nudity for fear of being discovered as incompetent or unworthy of their position. In Jefferson’s retelling he usually left out the final part wherein he was run out of town by the palace guard after the Emperor revealed his new clothes to his people and the peasants had no qualms about informing their ruler that he had been fleeced and was therefore stark naked. 

Jefferson’s pride had also carried over into Storybrooke, albeit it had been somewhat beaten into submission by circumstances. He took pride in his identity, his true identity and the fact that he remembered it: Jefferson, the Mad Hatter, Rumpelstiltskin’s one time apprentice, and the proud father of Grace. The memories were painful and they made people dismiss him as crazy, but the alternative would be far more horrible. Grace was his life, his whole world, even if he forgot her he’d still be able to feel the gaping wound she’d leave in his heart. 

For Emma, pride was her armor. She knew that if you considered yourself better than everyone else you could never grow attached, and if you could stay unattached it wouldn’t hurt when they left you. This strategy was flawed and only worked on rare occasion. There really wasn’t much in her life for Emma to be proud of: high school drop-out, parentless, friendless, for a good portion of her teenage years; homeless, not to mention a convicted criminal for petty theft. But Emma had built herself up from nothing, had fought and clawed her way back up from rock bottom. It had been hard, there were times when she honestly though she couldn’t do it: crying into her pillow at night after one of the many prison yard fights she’d avoided after having her dinner spilled over her orange jumpsuit, giving up Henry, picking up litter off the Phoenix highway in blazing summer heat, leaving prison and finding she had nothing to her name save for the clothes on her back and a little yellow Volkswagon bug to call home. Despite all of that, Emma had given as good as she got and had finally worked her way into a place where she could say with some degree of honesty that she was proud of herself for what she’d accomplished in her life. But Emma’s pride also lent itself to her stubbornness, which meant that when it came to apologies; few were ever made, and the situations where she could be asked to give them were avoided. 

But it is well known that pride always cometh before the fall. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After the curse had broken it was pride that kept Jefferson and Emma from reconciling. There was also a fair amount of wrath left between them… it had been Jefferson who’d retrieved the apple for Regina after all.

Ultimately, it would be their children that brought them together again. Henry and Grace were still in the same class so Emma and Jefferson would occasionally run into each other as they deposited or retrieved their children at the school.

For the longest time they did not speak, the wrath and guilt and pride inside them roiling around and preventing any adult behavior from being enacted. 

Meanwhile, Henry and Grace watched as their respective parents began to feel worse and worse the longer they avoided each other. They began to scheme during school hours, brainstorming different ideas about how to get their parents to admit that they liked each other or to at least forgive one another. 

Henry pestered his mother about how she stared at Jefferson all the time, but all that did was earn frustrated groans from Emma and a scolding from David or Mary Margaret. Likewise Grace frequently asked her father about the Sheriff, though she was more subtle about it, only bringing it up when she caught her father peering out the window through his spy glass, undoubtedly watching over the Sheriff and the trouble she got herself into. 

It wasn’t long before the two children with the help of Ruby, Granny, and Dr. Hopper were able to trick Emma and Jefferson into a snare meant to force them to rekindle their friendship… or at the very least to hash out their issues. 

The plan was simple. It involved a phone call from Granny to Jefferson and Emma saying that their children were currently skipping school at her diner, and then leading them into the B & B where the two of them would be locked in the same room thinking that their children would be there. Much to Emma and Jefferson’s chagrin the plan worked like a charm.


	5. Lust

Lust

Before Emma and Jefferson found themselves locked together in a room at Granny’s B & B, and long before Jefferson betrayed Emma to Regina they had been fighting a tension growing between them. A warmth in their hearts, and the magnetic draw of two souls both in desperate need of a connection to another, and two bodies hopelessly attracted to the other. It wasn’t love at first sight by a long shot, but it certainly was lust, and it had only ever been growing worse since the day they met.

Since the death of Grace’s mother only one or two women had caught Jefferson’s interest, but none had done so in quite the same way as Emma. The night he’d held her in his home there had been an attraction between them that made the air thick with tension. She was the first human contact he’d had in almost thirty years. The scent of her hair had been intoxicating. He’d almost abandoned his plans of hat-making to suggest a different sort of activity altogether… almost. Magic coursed through her veins, and when his fingers brushed her skin he could feel it simmering beneath the surface. It kept him on task, with all that magic she would get it to work. It took him a while to figure out that it wasn’t just her magic that drew him back to her over and over again, but rather her fire, and her determination to bring order to this weirdly chaotic little town. She intrigued him, and the more he discovered the more he wanted to know, and the better he knew her the more he craved her company.

For Emma the situation was much more complex. Jefferson wasn’t entirely sane, and he had once held her hostage in his home in order to force her into believing in magic, and he’d frequently spoken to her of magic spells, fairytale creatures and the like. It didn’t matter that in the end she’d discovered that he was telling the truth. During that night as a hostage in his house Emma had been forced to ignore a tense electricity in the air between them, a strange attraction to a man who was an intoxicating mixture of passionate, loyal, and oddly charming, but also manic, violent, and completely unpredictable. But as they grew to know one another, Emma finally pegged that tension as an unwanted and completely inappropriate attraction to the man. 

Then there was the fact that he’d been the one to retrieve the poison apple for Regina, an apple meant to harm her if Henry hadn’t interfered… Henry had apparently forgiven Jefferson for this, but for Emma once trust was lost there were no second chances.

Now it seemed that the town had turned against them and decided to force them to sort out their differences by locking them in a room at Granny’s until they made up.

The first hour or so was spent shouting and pounding on the door, attempting to get out of the situation entirely via reason, coercion, pleading and eventually threatening. It didn’t work.

It was Jefferson who caved in the end and started the conversation which eventually devolved into a screaming match. Henry, Grace, and the others all listened from the opposite side of the door with concerned expressions on their faces. Dr. Hopper calming explained that this was probably natural. He emphasized the “probably” when a loud crash indicated something being thrown and shattering across the wooden door. Granny glared at him for the loss of one of her antique vases. 

After five hours Emma tried to escape by climbing out the window. It was Granny and her crossbow that kept Emma from attempting to jump the dangerous three storey drop. But Snow and Henry’s terrified yells did more to persuade Emma than Granny’s fearsome aim. Although a panicked Jefferson holding onto her wrists and refusing to let her go, didn’t hurt either. 

It was around about this time that Emma and Jefferson accepted the fact that they were in this room for the long haul. Ruby brought them dinner around seven in the evening, complete with a bottle of Emma’s favorite whiskey to serve as nightcaps. Jefferson and Emma proceeded to get roaring drunk while the conspirators took shifts guarding the door.

Three shots in, Emma and Jefferson were laughing with each other over stories of Jefferson’s various escapades as a conman and Emma’s as a thief. Five shots in Emma and Jefferson shared their first kiss, which led to another, and then another. 

Jefferson’s mind had gone deliciously quiet in the presence of Emma’s magic and he felt it enter into the air as she gave into her emotions. The fact that neither one of them had entered into this situation prepared for this outcome meant that they had to be creative with their desires. Jefferson learned that Emma shuddered deliciously when he nibbled on her earlobe. She learned that he could be teased into a frenzy by playing with his scar, but that what he loved more than anything else was simply being allowed to take comfort in another human being after having been denied it for so long. 

They weren’t finished having their difficult conversations or reconciling by a long shot, but Henry and Grace had successfully seen to it that their respective parents would be able and willing to have those conversations in the future.

It was a red-faced and apologetic Ruby who woke them the following morning as she brought them breakfast. 

“Well, I hope you didn’t want to keep this quiet.” Emma said, ruefully. “Cause, Ruby’ll tell the whole town by this afternoon.”

Ruby returned just as the two of them had finished getting dressed and announced that they were free to leave the room. When they emerged into Granny’s diner, they were greeted by the excited hugs of their children shouting. “It worked, it worked!” And they blushed at the wolfish grin on Ruby’s face as Snow White chimed in that it worked better than anticipated.


	6. Envy

Envy

Envy was a vice Emma knew all too well. As a child she had felt it every day. Envy towards the children in her foster home, the children who actually belonged there. Envy towards the kids at her school, the same ones who made fun of her hand-me-down clothes, and called her cruel names like “the ugly duckling.” Emma had outgrown the hand-me-downs and the name calling, but she’d never really outgrown the stab of jealousy she always felt when she watched proud parents taking photos with their children after school concerts and plays, or at graduation. No one ever took pictures of Emma to send around to grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. 

Emma had even been immensely jealous of Grace the night she first met Jefferson. Jefferson was everything that she had ever desired in a parent. Well, minus the obvious mental instability, he was everything she’d ever desired. He supplied Grace with unconditional, doting, love; as well as the loyalty and security of a parent who would never abandon their child if they could help it. He would literally do anything for his daughter. Emma had learned that first hand. 

Now, Emma had found her parents, albeit in a way that she had never expected. Mary Margaret tried to fill the maternal gap in Emma’s life, but their relationship had settled into something closer to sisterly love. She and Charming hadn’t quite found the appropriate relationship to fall into yet. But strangely Emma was ok with it, she had made peace with the idea of not getting the conventional upbringing she’d always wanted, even if she was still trying to process having parents the same physical age as her. Her parents had a much better excuse for abandoning her than most. Not many people can say that they search for their parents and find out that they are the daughter of the Snow White and Prince Charming. Emma still had moments when the unfairness of it all pained her, but she was finding ways to work through it. It was easier now that she had a network of people around her who cared. In the end, Emma had found her family, it certainly wasn’t conventional, but there was love. Emma could tell Mary Margaret and David had accepted her immediately as their daughter after they woke up from the curse, and Henry had entered into her life and brightened it considerably. So Emma knew that she would never have reason to feel jealous of a child for having their family again. 

But this fulfillment of her life’s dream had left something of a hollow place in Emma’s heart that was begging to be filled, and Jefferson was all too eager to comply. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jefferson had always been an envious person. He envied Rumplestiltskin’s magic. He envied Regina’s wealth and power. He envied his own daughter’s innocence. There came a time when he even envied Emma’s willful ignorance. Anything to let him escape the hell of his existence.

Wealth, magic, and power were all things that could be acquired; slowly yes, for the son of a poor family, but over a lifetime a man could build himself up into something more than what he’d been given at birth. But innocence and ignorance were another matter entirely. Once lost neither one could ever be recovered, even with the help of magic. These things were never perfect, any spell could be broken… even if you didn’t want it to be. Sometimes if you want to forget once you do the memories still linger enough that they eat at you, and make you curious… and as Jefferson had learned all too well in Wonderland, curiosity often led you into a world of trouble. 

But the curse was broken now, Jefferson had his daughter, Jefferson had Emma. He had wealth and love, and he no longer desired magic or power, having learned his lesson the first time. Envy was not an emotion he felt any longer. It had been replaced in his repertoire by contentment, which was a novel feeling for him.

The only thing he desired any longer was his daughter’s happiness, and perhaps if he was very lucky, the chance to try and make Emma Swan happy too. Where they went, he would follow. He was a changed man; a better one, he liked to think. His demons were being chased away, slowly but surely, and his sins were finally being paid off. The things that kept him up at night were no longer his guilt and self-loathing, but now the fear of losing this hard-won peace and happiness. Like magic, happily-ever-after does not come without a price, nor is it ever really the uninterrupted bliss Henry’s storybook would have one believe. He is slowly learning that this is doubly so when that happiness includes Emma Swan, the Savior of Storybrooke. Emma came hand-in-hand with trouble and even danger; but if a little excitement and adventure was the price for his happiness, Jefferson was all too willing to pay it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Yikes, this was a tough chapter. Technically I finished it a while ago, but I’ve been tweaking it a little bit at a time into something of the same quality as the rest of these pieces. It took me a while, but I’m finally happy with how this one turned out. The final bit is already finished, so I’ll post it in a few days after it goes through the editing process. Hope you enjoy, if you do, why not leave a message saying so? If you didn’t, why not leave a message saying so, so I can improve next time?


	7. Gluttony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, folks! Thanks so much for reading, I had no idea this was going to be as difficult to complete as it was, but we’re done! Thank you to everyone who reviewed for your support, and thank you to everyone who stuck with me, and who continues to ship and read Mad Swan. Hope you enjoyed this little piece of fluff!

Gluttony

Emma had nothing left to wish for. 

She had her family, she had her child, she had her lover, she had a home, friends; all the things she’d lacked but desperately longed for as a child. But now that she had these things, she found that she wanted not something else, but rather, perhaps more of something… 

Emma had never really considered herself gluttonous. She did have a bit of a sweet tooth, left over from her teenage years living off of nothing but junk food and caffeine. But her soft spot for zebra cakes and sugary breakfast cereal was nothing compared to Jefferson’s almost obsessive appetite for tea. He ordered from six different specialty tea shops, and he imported direct from at least one tea plantation. While Emma had to admit that they were all delicious, she did feel Jefferson’s taste for tea was a bit excessive. Aside from tea he had a weakness for expensive fashion and beautiful things. He spoiled Grace, Emma, and Henry equally rotten with his purchases. He had long since run out of room on his shelves for more knick-knacks and space on his walls for pictures and art, but since his apparent delight in spending money had not waned it was starting to overflow into Mary Margaret and David’s apartment, and then where ever else he could find a willing recipient for his gifts. 

This was another thing Emma was unused to… valuable possessions. Up until recently Emma’s most precious belongings were in the form of her baby-blanket, and the charm Neal had given her. Up until recently, all of her possessions could be packed neatly into her Bug in under twenty minutes with room to spare. 

But there was something else she felt she was missing, and it took Emma a long time to figure out what it was that was making her feel discontent. Emma missed travel. 

One positive aspect of her semi-nomadic lifestyle before, was that she’d seen a good portion of the continental United States while chasing down fugitives. She’d even popped over the borders into Mexico and Canada a few times, but she’d always wanted to go further. She’d always wanted to see the world. London, Paris, Tahiti… all the places she’d seen pictures of in school and on television, but never had the opportunity to visit on her own dime. Now that magic was a part of her life apparently there were countless other worlds to travel to as well… Wonderland, the Land Without Color... she wondered if there was a Hogwarts out there somewhere. Emma had liked those books, Harry had felt like a kindred spirit.

Eventually, Jefferson had noticed her melancholy and had asked her what was wrong. When she told him, he had frowned but didn’t say another word. He didn’t bring it up again until one day he walked into the Sheriff’s station while Emma was at work with a smug grin on his face. Emma knew this particular grin, it was the one he usually saved for when he had made her scream particularly loudly in bed. He set the hat-box on her desk, and Emma quirked an eyebrow at him.

“I fixed it.” He told her, triumphantly. “Well, Rumplestiltskin may have helped in exchanged for a favor, but… I fixed it.”

Emma hadn’t quite caught up with him yet. “Well, that’s nice Jefferson, but you couldn’t wait to tell me till I got home?”

Jefferson deflated a little. “Emma, don’t you know what this means? We can travel now! I can take you anywhere you want to go. Anywhere you can possibly imagine.” 

Emma blinked up at him and gaped a little. “But… all you had to do was buy a plane ticket! What about the rules? I thought you never wanted to risk getting stranded again!”

Jefferson’s grin widened into the shit-eating variety, and he shook his head while practically bouncing with excitement.

“No! I fixed it. Rumplestiltskin tweaked the spell, so that can never happen again. The only rule now is that only those who go in the hat can come out. You can’t leave someone behind.” 

Emma sighed, it still sounded like there could be some problems with this new arrangement. 

“Jefferson…” she groaned.

Jefferson took her hands. “Emma, let me do this for you… We’ll take Henry and Grace along with us.”

“And what if we get separated? What if we get into trouble?”

“Then we’ll follow your parents’ example, and find one another. I promise I won’t use this for anyone else, just for you… My only request is that we avoid Wonderland…”

“Yeah, I’m not sure I’d want to go there anyway… But you said you promised Mr. Gold a favor, that’s never a good thing.”

“I just have to help him find somebody in this land, no hat-travel required… No tricks that I can’t get out of.”

Emma stared at him, still unsure, but eventually the wanderlust she’d been fighting won out at this marvelous opportunity.

“Anywhere I want?” she asked quietly, and Jefferson smiled happily.

“Anywhere.” He agreed, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his forehead against hers with a happy sigh.

So the next morning Emma and Jefferson packed up their children and explored some of the many realms on offer by the hat. After a few days they returned, safely, to the world where their responsibilities would only wait for them for so long, and Emma was content for what may have been the first time in her life. She had everything she could possibly wish for, and she felt eternally grateful to whatever lucky star that had led her to this opportunity. 

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I would greatly appreciate any reviews, especially ones giving me some feed back on how I can improve. But sort ones are equally cherished.


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